There will be 20 tweets at a time over the next seven days, with 280 tweets in total.

The Cloud Atlas author has stated that he doesn't actually use Twitter, and only opened an account for the special project.

"I'm not really a social media animal," he told BBC News. "I like my privacy... I don't want to make public the ante-rooms of my mind. I don't want to add to this ocean of trivia and irrelevance, it's already vast and deep enough."

The first tweet of the story read:

We get off the Number 10 bus at a pub called 'The Fox and Hounds'. 'If anyone asks,' Mum tells me, 'say we came by taxi.'

He added that he does not want to be considered a "gimmick chaser", and that the project was to find a reason for "using this Arab Spring-size technology" and "to retain some semblance of integrity".

The Right Sort is narrated by a teenage boy who discovers Valium, with the story following him on a trip in "a sequence of nice little throbs and pulses". Mitchell explained: "He's basically thinking in tweets because of the Valium."